Search Results

In the first years of the 20th century, almost anyone with the given names Frederick Nicholas had a good chance to be nicknamed “Fritz,” and so it was with Fritz Coumbe, though his ancestry was British rather than Teutonic. But most of the papers of the day called him Fred. Fred’s father George Coumbe had […]

Mike Flanagan was the ace of a Baltimore Orioles staff for over a decade. The 1979 Cy Young Award winner helped the Orioles to two World Series appearances and was part of a combined no-hitter in 1991. He relied on a repertoire of pitches, including a fastball, heavy sinker, slow curve, and changeup. Michael Kendall […]

Rollie Sheldon’s introduction to big-league baseball came with the 1961 New York Yankees. With a record of 109-53, that team ranks as one of the winningest in the franchise’s history.1 Sheldon’s record in his rookie year was 11-5, topped among the starters by Whitey Ford (25-4) and Ralph Terry (16-3). Though he was 24 at […]

Left-hander Bill Foxen was the most talented of a trio of Deadball Era pitching brothers, and the only one to have a major league career. That career, however, never quite lived up to expectations and lasted only three-plus seasons. In retrospect, there may have been a reason: Foxen was actually five years older than he […]

Sam Moffet was one of four Moffet family members involved in professional baseball in the 1880s. In addition to Sam, his brother Joe played shortstop for the Toledo Blue Stockings, another brother, Link (Abraham Lincoln), played for the Nashville Blues and the Wheeling Nailers, and a first cousin, Robert McNichol (1852-1901), was an umpire first […]

On the evening of September 21, 1964, the Philadelphia Phillies’ Art Mahaffey was pitching a gem of a baseball game. In the top of the sixth inning it was a scoreless duel in between Mahaffey and the Cincinnati Reds’ John Tsitouris at Connie Mack Stadium in Philadelphia. With two outs, 25-year-old Reds rookie Chico Ruiz […]

Ferguson Arthur Jenkins, Jr. was a dominant right-handed pitcher known for strikeouts, eleventh (through 2013) on the all-time leader list with 3,192. He is the only pitcher to have more than 3,000 strikeouts with less than 1,000 walks (997). While he pitched for the Philadelphia Phillies, Texas Rangers and Boston Red Sox, he is best […]

Steve Bilko was a heavy hitter. Baseball encyclopedias list him at 6-foot-1 and 230 pounds, the greatest tonnage that baseball allowed in print in the 1950s until the mammoth Frank Howard came along. When anyone asked Bilko how much he weighed, as so many did, he’d say between 200 and 300. Years later he told […]

Do we call him Junior or Gene? Was Junior his given name or a nickname? Could it be both? No matter. As a fresh-faced youngster Junior Thompson helped the Cincinnati Reds win two consecutive National League pennants. As a mature veteran Gene Thompson impacted the game of baseball for half a century. Junior Eugene Thompson […]

Frederick Romaine Applegate, who won one of three decisions pitching for the Philadelphia Athletics in 1904, was born on May 9, 1879. His father, James, emigrated from England to America in 1871. James settled in Williamsport, Pennsylvania’s timber-industry hub, where he worked as a grocer. In April 1878 he married New York native Mary Williams.1 […]

Bespectacled right-hander John Podgajny jumped from a Class C league to the Philadelphia Phillies as a 20-year-old September call-up in 1940. He completed three of his four starts and issued only one walk in 35 innings, suggesting a bright future. The Phillies, however, were at the nadir of their long history, in the midst of […]

This article appears in SABR’s “Wrigley Field: The Friendly Confines at Clark and Addison” (2019), edited by Gregory H. Wolf.   Well into the twentieth century, Black players were barred from participating in baseball games at Wrigley Field, even though there had been Negro League baseball in the area for many years. The first evidence […]

A packed Riverfront Stadium celebrated future Hall of Fame catcher and lifetime Cincinnati Red Johnny Bench’s career achievements. The 17-year veteran had announced his retirement earlier in the season,1 and now the Reds’ faithful enjoyed the opportunity to acknowledge his many contributions to baseball and the Queen City. The two-time MVP and 1970s Big Red […]

The 1970 Boston Red Sox had a trio of avid anglers—Reggie Smith, Carl Yastrzemski, and Gary Peters—who carried fishing tackle on road trips. An August swing through Minnesota gave the trio a chance to relax on a lake in Spicer, about 100 miles from Bloomington, Minnesota, where they would start a three-game series against the […]

Hank Aaron was tired and a bit on edge as he made his way to Crosley Field for the Atlanta Braves’ Sunday afternoon twin bill with the Cincinnati Reds to conclude a four-game series. He had fielded phone calls until 3 A.M. and had an upset stomach, too. “I didn’t eat much,” said Aaron. “I’m […]

On June 3, 1956, Richie Ashburn rapped two doubles and three singles in the second game of a Sunday doubleheader to lead the Philadelphia Phillies past the St. Louis Cardinals, 9-3. It was the only game in Ashburn’s 15-year Hall of Fame, career in which he collected five hits. It may be surprising that Ashburn, […]

“He didn’t like to lose to anyone in anything,” catcher Tim McCarver wrote about pitcher Bob Gibson, his 1960s batterymate with the St. Louis Cardinals.1 One imagines that Gibson didn’t much like to tie anyone, either. But on May 1, 1971, the future Hall of Famer found himself on neither the long end nor the […]

If you were a fan of semipro baseball in New England in the late 1920s, you knew who Will “Cannonball” Jackman was, and you couldn’t wait for the Philadelphia Colored Giants to come to town, so that you could watch him pitch. Jackman’s semipro career began in 1921 with the Houston Black Buffaloes.1 He joined […]

After Travis Blackley won his last seven decisions for the Triple-A Tacoma Rainiers to improve his record to 7-2 with a 2.63 ERA in 14 starts,1 the 21-year-old Australian received a surprise late-night phone call on June 30, 2004, from Seattle Mariners manager Bob Melvin. “He said he had a proposition for me,” Blackley recalled. […]

The city of St. Louis was ecstatic that it would get to host at least two games of the 61st World Series during its bicentennial year. In addition to thrusting the Midwestern metropolis itself into the spotlight, “two sons of St. Louis,” Johnny Keane and Yogi Berra, were managing the Cardinals and New York Yankees […]

“We were a rock star baseball team,” said right-hander Orel Hershiser about the 1995 Cleveland Indians. “You’d drive around and see Wahoo signs in almost every front yard. You’d walk into restaurants, and there were pictures of the players on the walls. I’d never quite seen anything like it. I get the chills just to […]

Two years after Sports Illustrated published his spoof on the adventures of Hayden (Siddhartha, Sidd) Finch in the New York Mets’ 1985 spring-training camp, the ever-creative George Plimpton1 expanded the April 1, 1985, classic into a 275-page novel, also titled The Curious Case of Sidd Finch.2 SABR revisited the April foolery with a 30-year retrospective […]

The atmosphere was positively electric at Shea Stadium on the night of July 9, 1969, as the Mets prepared to play the Cubs in the biggest game in Mets history. The upstart Mets, in only their eighth season of existence, were in a position that no one thought possible before the season — contending for […]

On June 26, 1962, Earl Wilson of the Boston Red Sox became the first Black pitcher to throw a no-hitter in the American League, and his third-inning home run provided the game-winning run in Boston’s 2-0 win over the Los Angeles Angels. Wilson was the first Black ballplayer to sign with the Red Sox—in 1953—but […]